Introduction
Research many times involves collecting data and comparing results to gain a deeper understanding of the characteristics and trends of a population. How well do you know your peers in this class? How can we find out more about the characteristics of the population here in this class? Do you really know that much about the person sitting right next to you? In this activity you may just discover some things that you didn't know about your peers.
Task
In this activity we will practice collecting data about the population of our class by asking each individual appropriate questions that are specific to each individual. Quantitative questions like "how many pets do you own?" and "what size shoe do you wear?" will be answered by your peers and you will record them on the spreadsheet provided. Quantitative data can be recorded in multiple ways, but it is highly efficient to use a means that organizes the data, especially when talking about large populations or samples. Computerized spreadsheets make organizing and calculating descriptive statistics very easy. In this task you will also learn how to use Google forms and spreadsheets to organize and calculate the central tendencies and the standard deviation in each set of data that you collect from your peers.
Process
- Go around the room and ask each student the questions on the data collection worksheet. Make sure that you collect data from every student that is present. You will complete the last four tables in step three of this activity. Please do not complete these last four until step three. If you would like to make your data collecting more efficient you can build a Google Form for each question and share it with each student in the class. To learn more about Google Forms visit the link to see a "how to" tutorial video.
- After each student has collected all of the data it is now time to calculate central tendencies and other descriptive statistics on the data collection worksheet. You will calculate mean, median, mode, range, interquartile range, standard deviation, and mean deviation. You can also watch the tutorial video that shows you how to use formulas in Google Spreadsheet to calculate descriptive statistics.
- In steps one and two we collected data from the entire population of the class. Now we will complete the last four tables and calculations on our worksheet by choosing a random sample from the class. All of the calculations are the same for random samples except for find the standard deviation. The formula for sample standard deviation is slightly different. When calculating the sample standard deviation you need to divide by one less than the number of data points that you have collected. Check out the video that demonstrates how to calculate sample standard deviation.
- Record your findings on the Google Form that I have created.
Evaluation
Upon finishing this activity each student should campare the population standard deviation and sample standard deviation for the following corresponding data sets that you collected in this activity.
Conclusion
Thank you for working hard to collect data about your peers. Did you learn anything about your generation that you may infer from the data that you collected and analyzed? In the culminating activity project you will come up with your own questions to ask. Hopefully there is something that you will be interested in finding out about your peers or in some other aspect of your life.
Credits
Images courtesy of Morguefile.com
Littell, McDougal,. McDougal Littell Georgia high school mathematics 2. 2008. Print.
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